Meaning of a Dream

After writing my SBI review, I got many emails from readers with specific, in-depth questions about Site Build It. Understandably, they wanted definitive answers before embarking on their own online business. So I decided to publish the most common questions and answers here to help you if you're in a similar position.

Here are the most common questions I hear about running a website with SBI.

Always a popular question, so I'll get right to it.

Below is a graph of my monthly website income since launch - all values are USD.

In July 2008, I made my first US $60 in advertising income, even while the site was just a handful of pages and I still knew very little about online business. After that, the business grew steadily (with some bumper months, like May 2009 when I did an interview with StevePavlina.com and July 2010 with the release of Inception).

The latest growth spike began in late 2011 when I started to focus on sales of my own product, The Lucid Dreaming Fast Track. This proved to be a huge hit and should provide a growing revenue stream going forward. In April 2012 I launched my own affiliate program so bloggers can make money selling my product too.

The graph demonstrates my level of online income today and the overall upward trend during what has been nearly four years of global recession.

Below you can see a comparison of my website income against the minimum wage in the US, as well as my last day job income as a financial journalist in London (adjusted to US dollars, all amounts are before tax).

It took two years (July 2010) before I could match my old day job salary, which was a decent paying job for my age and experience. During those two years I have:

Built online business assets which are forecast to generate US $80,000 this financial year. If I were to sell them today, these passive-income generating websites would conservatively be valued at $400,000+. Enjoyed a relaxed work-at-home lifestyle which beat my stressful city job hands down. I took unlimited vacation days and sick days, including a month-long overseas trip to Europe while my business ran itself.

I'm not an overnight millionaire. I'm a self-employed business owner who took the time to create income-generating assets and build increasing revenue over time. This is the epitome of the Site Build It business model.

SBI also teaches you how to make passive income via your website. This is important. I don't clock in from 9 to 5 in order to guarantee a take-home pay. I work when it suits me. And I can take time off at the drop of a hat.

All the while, my business continues to generate increasing profits based on content I've created in the past. Growing web traffic enables me to make money from my past and current efforts, with revenues hitting my bank account automatically.

Of course, I won't retire now. The benefit of continuing to work hard on my websites is to keep growing them as assets, providing a greater scale of income in future. This means I can have an ever improving quality of life while working when it suits me.

There are several main routes (and dozens of sub-routes) to make money with your website. Most SBI users go with:

Google AdSense (get paid per click, usually a few cents per visitor)Affiliate commissions (get paid 5-75% per sale of a partner's product)Own product sales (get paid 95-100% on your own product sales)Site Build It will help you decide which route to go down first, but the reality is, the proof is in the pudding. You have to test a few different methods and see what generates the best level of income for your site.

For example, many websites make good money from Google AdSense - blocks of text and image advertising placed throughout the website content. The ads are automatically generated by Google, so once you put them in and find a placement that works well, you can pretty much forget they exist.

I then turned my attention to affiliate programs, where I recommend my favorite lucid dreaming products and get paid a commission per sale. Once I test the product and write my review, I generally do no further work to it. Readers find the review as they navigate my site and sales are made without my intervention.

At the end of each month, my affiliate partners add up how many sales I made and send my commissions to my bank account. Passive income 101.

I also make money from sales of my own digital product. It took me a while to get there, but I figured if people like my website content, they're likely to be willing to pay for further content, if it's something they can't get anywhere else. And so my digital lucid dreaming course was born... (see below).

Here's a little more on some specific income sources that work well for me:

The Lucid Dreaming Fast Track - This is my own information product teaching anyone how to have lucid dreams. Producing your own ebook is similar to creating website content; planning is crucial. And because it's digital there are no production or shipping costs because it's all delivered online. I make 95% per sale (5% goes in PayPal transaction fees). I also run my own affiliate program, so other people with similar websites can sell my course and earn 65% per sale. Meditation Power - As is a creator of digital brainwave entrainment, Meditation Power's affiliate program pays out 75% commission per MP3 sale. There are many vendors to choose from, but this is my favorite because it offers the best prices for the latest technology, a huge range of products, and a 60-day money back guarantee. Be careful about choosing which affiliates you work with, because you are endorsing them personally. Amazon Kindle Books - I have now written or co-written three books sold on the Amazon Kindle marketplace. This platform enables anyone to self-publish for free, and instead of selling paperback books, they sell digital books to people with e-readers (Kindles). This generates 70% author royalties for me on every download. I write my books based on my knowledge of lucid dreaming, and though I don't sell the books on my website, it makes an obvious way to monetize my knowledge and experience.

How you decide to monetize your website is up to you.

You may find there are no affiliate products you want to sell, so just stick to pay-per-click advertising. Or you may exclusively create and sell your own e-goods.

When you develop a serious following, you may look at producing your own teleseminars, conferences and workshops.

An SBI website can also support your local offline business, such as a restaurant, hairdresser or real estate agent, and use it to generate new customer leads. It really does dependon your website niche and what you're offering.

I always knew I had a strong interest in lucid dreaming, but I never thought I could make a living out of it. That was, until I started using SBI's Brainstorm It feature.

With this tool, I made a list of all my hobbies, passions, expertise and areas of interest, and ran them through SBI's comparison of web searches. It then analyzed my favorite topics for searchability, competition and profitability.

In the end, it was mostly a numbers game. Based on my chosen topics, SBI used its special formula to calculate what the most popular and profitable website niche would be for me. It also took into account how much I liked each topic.

And that's how I ended up making a website about lucid dreaming.

My other early site concepts included unexplained phenomena, science fiction, playing piano, photography, travel, New Zealand, cake recipes, writing, stock market investing, natural vision improvement and paranormal activity.

You don't need to be the world's most foremost expert on a particular subject to make a website about it. You are creating a personal project, not a Wikipedia page.

As long as you have: a starting knowledge, a passion for your subject, and some level of first-hand insight to make your website unique. It may be your favorite travel destination, your experience of owning a pet lizard, or your fascination for psychology that gives your niche website a unique and personal edge.

Personal development is a huge industry and a lot of people want to hop on the bandwagon. It is, after all, very fulfiling to think up ways to improve yourself.

There are also countless ways to monetize a personal development website. The internet is chock full of self help courses, conferences and webinars.

As a result, there is huge competition in this area, so you might find it hard to rank well on Google for personal development keywords. You may find yourself a small fish an in enormous ocean - and it will take a much bigger investment of your time (eg - a lot more article writing) before you become a true player in this field.

If you are a great writer, a great thinker, and have the ability to be truly original, then I see no reason not to develop a website on the broad subject of personal development.

However, not everyone is as original as they'd like to think. If what you've got to say has been said a hundred times before, then what value are you adding?

If you don't have the fresh angle to compete with some of the leading personal development experts in the world - then I recommend selecting a sub-niche. There are many sub-niches to choose from within personal development, like:

Stress reliefMemory improvementAlternative medicineSelf hypnosisDream interpretationRaw food dietsBetter relationships

...and so on. These are just off the top of my head and I'm sure you could create an enormous list if you wanted to. You can even Google it for inspiration.

Then you can plug your brightest ideas into Site Build It and find out which ones are popular enough to make a website about. In this field, I'm sure there are many - and with the focus narrowed, you'll find the competition a lot less daunting.

One big reason why I like Site Build It is that it simplifies the technology behind site building. It gives you a proven, step-by-step methodology for creating a successful website. This significantly reduces the number of challenges involved.

So I think the real challenges are personal:

Some people have a problem with motivation. They might start a business with all guns firing but then give up a few weeks later when they don't see instant results.

Building a business takes time, and even though Site Build It is there to hold your hand, there is no getting away from the fact that your future online career is 100% dependent on your own motivation and work ethic.

Your website will require your hard work and creativity. It's not an automated money making machine - at least not until you build it.

Yes - their solution is called Content 2.0 and it actually encourages a lot more user interactivity than your average blog comment field.

When a reader wants to comment on one of your articles, they fill out a form on your webpage, allowing them to tell a story and even add pictures.

SBI automatically creates a whole new page of content for it - so your website visitors actually end up building new content on your behalf.

The page is submitted to Google instantly and your website grows on autopilot, the way Facebook grows exponentially without Mark Zuckerberg lifting a finger.

In this way, reader comments can effectively build your business - for free. And why do they do it? Because they want to.

The rapid rise of social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube shows that internet users are gagging to create their own content. The fact that it is hosted by you just makes your website even more popular.

To learn more about this feature, SBI has an informative page on Content 2.0.

I hope that helps flesh out your understanding of the SBI process and what sort of difference it could make to your life. A few years ago - at the very start of the global recession - I was in the same boat you are now. I was fed up with the rat race, desperate to forge a more creative career and kick the 9-to-5 routine.

When I started using Site Build It, I found exactly what I was looking for. SBI is responsible for the birth of this website and how far it has come. I'm yet to see anything like it in the marketplace, offering everything a beginner needs for success.

So check out Site Build It yourself and see how you can build a profitable website based on your hobby or passion... and change your life in the process.

Rebecca Turner
Editor, World of Lucid Dreaming